“Hey, that’s wonderful!” Temple was always primed to applaud another person’s self-improvement program. “It can’t be easy to drive one of these monsters. But, Electra... why?”
The woman pulled off the sinister helmet, revealing a spiky crew cut of silver hair ending in a long pigtail in back. On most late-middle-aged women such a hairdo would seem a pathetic attempt at kicky youth; on Electra it looked funky and even elegant.
Electra’s head tilted until her ear cuffs chimed. She eyed the silver motorcycle and tried, “Because it was there?”
“But why was it there?” Temple persisted with the determination of an ex-TV reporter. “You never mentioned having one. I’ve never seen—or even more to the point, heard it before.”
Electra’s hand patted the leather seat as if stroking the flank of a favorite steed. “It was Max’s.”
“Max’s?” Temple hadn’t meant to sound sharp, or shocked, but she did. Both.
Electra’s silver-metal boot toe kicked the asphalt. “A cycle’s real practical with all the traffic jams in Vegas. And it is a beauty.”
Temple stared at the thing as if it had landed from Mars. “I had no idea that Max liked—had—a motorcycle.”
“Hey, he used it as the down payment on the condo.” Temple eyed her landlady incredulously. She was getting tired of learning things about Max after he was gone—long gone. Four months gone without a goodbye, with no explanation.
“Speaking of the condo,” Temple began uncomfortably, “I had to take Louie to the vet and it cost a fortune. I might be a little late with the monthly maintenance money, but not the mortgage.”
“Don’t worry about it, dear.” Electra’s waving hand ignited a shower of glints from the many rings covering her fingers like chain mail. “I know it’s tough when suddenly one person is paying on a place instead of two. Besides, according to folks who know their motorcycles, this baby is worth major moolah. It’s a classic.”
“How classic can a motorcycle get?”
“Plenty. It’s a Hesketh Vampire.”
“No wonder it gave me the shivers when I heard it coming. Why on earth is it called a vampire?”
“Maybe because it sounds dangerous. It howls in prime gear when the wind whistles by.”
Temple shook her head. “Hesketh Vampire,” she repeated numbly. “Any relation to a Sopwith Camel?” That was some sort of early biplane, she thought.
“Well, it is British-made.” Electra proudly circled her new toy, ticking off its assets. “A full-liter engine, one thousand cee-cees. Nickel-plated and overbuilt to go literally millions of miles.”
Temple followed Electra around the massive machine, eyeing the steeply raked windshield, the fluid silver front casing—not shiny like chrome but matte-soft, classy—and the emblem of a crown surmounted by an angry rooster head above the Cyclopean front headlight.
“Max had this, really?”
“Yup.” Electra’s finger stroked the word “Hesketh” under the regal but surly rooster. “The famous Hesketh flying chicken. Now it’s chicken à la queen.” She chuckled and lifted her emblazoned helmet.
Temple just shook her head. “I don’t know much about motorcycles—and apparently knew even less about Max—but this is a humongous machine, Electra. Is it safe to drive?”
“Ride,” Electra corrected quickly. “Driving is for sissies.”
“Can a woman handle it safely?”
“Safety is not the idea with a superbike, dear,” Electra explained sweetly.
“But a woman your age—”
“A woman my age can use a little excitement. They say women are horse-crazy, but those ninnies are living in the last century. This thing rides like a rocket. Besides, it’s a good way to meet men, if you’re so inclined. I found me some guys who knew something about cycles and they taught me the ropes.”
“Where’d you find bikers?”
“They’re not bikers, just some older guys who tinker a bit. Wild Blue works mostly on vintage planes, but Eightball has played with a bike or two.”
“Eightball? Not Eightball O’Rourke?”
“Yeah, how’d you know him?”
“He’s the private detective I hired to tail the ABA cat-napper.”
Electra looked bemused. “No kidding? Until not too long ago, he and his pals were fugitives.”
“Fugitives? Eightball claimed he had a security background.”
Electra nodded sagely. “And so he does; nobody around Las Vegas has been as secure as Eightball all these years. He and the Glory Hole Gang hid out in the desert looking for some silver dollars they hijacked during World War Two and hid so good they couldn’t find them again themselves. Buried treasure. The statute of limitations had run out by the time anyone found out about them, and now they run Glory Hole as a tourist ghost town; it’s in that string of abandoned towns off of Highway 95.1 think Eightball got so used to looking for that lost treasure that he decided to get into the business of looking into this and that. Hooked on hunting, if you know what I mean.”
“But he had a license, he said he’d been employed in detection for years!”
“What would you say if you had a dicey background and were trying something new at age seventy-plus?”
“I can’t believe you know these people, Electra.”
Electra eyed Temple for a long moment. “I’m not responsible for what my friends or acquaintances do or did, but these are sweet old guys. Helped me out a lot, for nothing. They even had to chop the seat padding down so my legs could reach the ground.” She slapped the black leather again, and Temple winced. “Hated to do it, but face it, Max isn’t coming back. No sense letting a primo machine rot.”
“Right,” Temple murmured fervently.
“Heck,” Electra added, “I bet even you could ride my new baby with the seat this low. Come on, hop on. I’ll take you for a spin around the block.”
“No, thanks.” Temple turned to inspect her own “baby” in his vetmobile. “Louie needs to get his breakfast just as soon as I can tote in the twenty-pound bag in the trunk. I’ll pass.”
“Chicken?” Electra grinned wickedly, donning her helmet.
Temple didn’t honor that with a direct answer. “I’ve got a lot of work to get out on my computer before the WICA meeting at five-thirty. Sorry. Some other time,” she added with rare insincerity.
Electra’s platinum-gray eyebrows lofted nearly to the helmet’s brim. “Wicca? I didn’t know you were interested in witchcraft.”
“I’m not. It’s Women in Communications, Associated. Great for networking, and digging up freelance clients in the recession is more like doing black magic than white witchcraft.”
“I wouldn’t joke about the dark arts, dearie,” Electra said with a shudder, flipping down her sinister visor.
Despite needing to hustle, Temple couldn’t resist waiting to watch the landlady mount, expertly kick away the support, start the engine and chatter off in low gear to the shed around back.
Then she glumly lugged Louie through the gate, shut it and headed across the area bordering the pool, relieved that Matt Devine wasn’t in sight.
She couldn’t believe that Max had never mentioned that thing, much less using it for a down payment on the condo.... He had glossed over that issue when he’d put the place in both their names. Electra was financing it, so it was simple—if not monetarily easy—for Temple to take over the payments after Max skedaddled. And here Temple had hoped buying instead of renting had indicated that Max was as serious about permanent relationships as she was... hah!
While these thoughts festered, her autopilot had called the elevator, punched the proper floor and gotten her off before the doors sliced together on her or Louie’s carrier.
She walked down the semicircular hall to her door, unlocked it and sat Louie’s carrier on the entry-hall parquet. When she opened the grille, he sulked inside, reduced to a resentful glare of electric green eyes.